Focus on Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)

Article 4(2) and Annex II address projects that either do not reach the thresholds established in Annex I or they are considered by the legislator, due to their nature, of not having effects on their environment that would be significant enough to justify a mandatory EIA. For these projects, a preliminary procedure called “screening” applies, whereby it shall be determined, either by a case-by-case examination by the competent authority or thresholds or criteria set by the Member State, whether an EIA would be necessary for the project in question. In case the option provided by point (b) of Article 4(2) is chosen by the Member State, then the transposing national legislation is the one that sets the applicable thresholds or criteria. When doing so, it is general practice in the Member States that they look at the interaction of other pieces of EU environmental law where there may be overlaps of scope.

An example for this interaction could be illustrated by the case of large combustion plants. These projects fall under the scope of Annex II of the EIA Directive if their heat output is below 300 megawatts. At the same time, combustion of fuels in installations with a total rated thermal input of 50 megawatts or more is also subject to the Industrial Emissions Directive and thus their operation requires an integrated permit issued in accordance with its provisions. In most Member States the national legislator has chosen to bring these thresholds together by requiring a mandatory EIA for all combustion plants with a total rated thermal input of 50 megawatts or more, and therefore the requirement of an EIA and an integrated permit applies for the same category of projects.

Where a case-by-case examination is carried out, or thresholds or criteria are set for the purpose of paragraph 2, the relevant selection criteria set out in Annex III shall be taken into account.

The amendments of Directive 2014/52/EU clarified and simplified the screening procedure, providing a list of information to be submitted by the developer, minimum criteria in the content of the screening decision and time-frames for the screening decision that were previously missing.

In 2017 the European Commission published a guidance document on screening, a very useful source of information for all legal professionals dealing with environmental impact assessments.